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5 days ago

So the reason I do not run
Crop Rotation
right now is that I don't feel it is truly 100 % necessary as a must have mainboard card just for its one-time use... When used Solely for explosiveness that ultimately could still get you nowhere while it doesn't advance our lock in any way nor does it provide us with a turn 2 Derevi just seems Redundant to me... It Could also end up being a very very dead draw at some points in the game for just a "single-use-1-land-fetch" compared to
Weathered Wayfarer
in our longer grindy games which this deck aims for anyway or after the occasional Mass land destruction occurs (
Ravages of War
) :'( ...

But then again I've had success with it as well before by gaining quick access to
Gaea's Cradle
with some dudes out and a
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
in play or finding me
Forsaken City
to fuel my
Stasis
-Lock... While it can also give you card draw trough
Horizon Canopy
or soft counter a
Wasteland
/
Strip Mine
type effect finding you a replacement... I mean there is nothing wrong with running it and sure has some uses... It's an excellent card to be sure. but my Problem with it has always been the sheer disadvantage of losing card + Land Advantage and the possibility to have it be countered instead. losing all your tempo for just explosiveness is not my playstyle as I'd rather look at plays to keep my opponents from winning at all!

I am pretty aware of most Combo creatures and threats for us that are hard to deal with. But just one effect like this doesn't feel right and Chances (%) are so slim of you having this at your disposal and it being castable as well... I do run effective removal that is also a little more grindy in the form of
Ulvenwald Tracker
... I've become a huge fan of this card as you can force Derevi or other creatures heck even Dorks to smash into a
Hermit Druid
for example... Most of these combo creatures are very low toughness. Or the ability to keep removing Dorks and such is also very effective.

As a creature heavy deck, most combo decks won't get through to you that easily by aggro either or go for aggro at all anyway as that is mostly not their go to win condition... I mean we can eat
Tymna the Weaver
or
Najeela, the Blade-Blossom
all day unless you're facing a lot of reanimator or Toolbox threats like Yisan that you need to deal with at instant speed... Yeah, then I'd side it in too!

If you could actually share or talk about the number of times this saved you from specific things that would definitely be interesting to take in consideration for other people looking for flex slots, or talk about the cards that force you to run this?!

With a deck so packed with hate towards artifacts and enchantments, I feel this only really becomes truly necessary over something like
Aura Shards
if an opponent managed to slip through your Stax and resolve a crucial combo piece which surely happens from time to time... Especially after the
Aetherflux Reservoir
and
Paradox Engine
/ Iso-reversal prints... It could fit in the deck instead of
Aura Shards
easily. The Only reason I haven't had to do so yet is because of grindy cards that allow me to take piece by piece...

Sure I've died to
Aetherflux Reservoir
while having
Stony Silence
+
Null Rod
in play and losing both with a bunch of other Stax in play... But I mean
Nature's Claim
would then still need to be just that right card at that right moment with such a low chance (%) being the card you draw or get access to every game for just its single use...

Hope that was of help and explained my thought process behind not running them in the current iteration for the time being. (Subject to Change according to meta or personal needs anyway and all of them are in my Sideboard explanation in the Primer!)

(Ya win some ya lose some :'( , But consistently wise I prefer the Grindy setup that aims to remain effective over the one time uses.)

Field of Ruin
actually ramps everyone else which I didn't get when I read the card, and I don't think I need anymore land destruction as
Strip Mine
has done the job for me, but I will consider it if I think I need more in future.

Explosive Vegetation
I think actually has a home here, and is hence an exception to the article! He mentions that it shouldn't be in the other Omnath though! The two landfall triggers are much better than the one of a
Rampant Growth
.

1 week ago

It's true that new players tend to do that. I'm a very Johnny player and enjoy researching, buying, and trading for singles that make my deck tick, but some people just like to play the cards they have. It never had to be that way with Temple, though. Until it found its way into every Commander product, it had only ever been printed in Scourge. If Wizards was going to let lands from Onslaught Block like fetchlands remain inaccessible to newer players, I don't see a reason they had to put a new supply of Temples out there.

I agree wholeheartedly. I do think that the Bouncelands are good if you have a casual meta, though. They line up horribly against
Blood Moon
and
Strip Mine
, but for budget 3-color decks, I think they're a good way to avoid missing land drops in the mid-game. For example, I put them in my dollar
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest
deck.

This one, I have an issue with. I think Temple is worse than a basic land in the vast majority of decks. Fetches and shocks are a manner of fixing, rather than power. Whether you have to fill out your manabase with
Cinder Barrens
or not shouldn't have bearing over whether or not your deck should be running Temple. If anything, colorless utility lands lose value if you have to run more tapped duals to fix your mana as a result.

I agree entirely, and that's why I think it's so damaging to put Temple in precons. If a new player sees an
Ancient Tomb
across the table and goes looking for a budget alternative, they'll have to weigh what to cut, and what benefits from the inclusion, which is the right way to evaluate cards.

1 week ago

As smne who played Mono-W Stax for a while, with the amazing
Hokori, Dust Drinker
at the helm, I'll share with you what thoughts inspire me your sweet Linvala decklist.

(Even if it has already been pointed out before, I wanna say that I also love the Urborg combo. It's unexpectable and freakin' gud!)

Let's start by the beginning: mana fixation.
Extraplanar Lens
is insane in every monocolored archetype, so it's a quite logic inclusion you made here. Nonetheless, I suggest you to go for Snow-covered lands to synergize better with it - that way you won't give a lift to your opponents playing white.

So... you're planning to focus your eyes on ruining Vannifar's day. To help with this strategy of being the nasty ''combo killer'' guy, I think you should put in some additional pieces of disruption.

That said, I don't know which Vannifar's version(s) your playgroup perform with. If it's a
Thornbite Staff
/
Intruder Alarm
one, things would be easier to calm down and you won't need such a heavy stax package - you'll need more single-target/multi-target removals though. And if it's the other one, certainly the most popular now (and also the most powerful/absurd), based on many shenanigans around the creatures Vannifar brings to the table, you'll need more stax support.

One of the very best cards you could add to stop all those creature-centered combos is
Humility
. This card is broken, this card is stupid. It even disables etb abilities. The only way your opponent has to go through is to destroy it with a creatureless source / or with a ''casting'' effect (like Ulamog has).

Single-handly, Humility tears apart most of the competitive Vannifar lists. However, based on the fact that it is still fragile to enchantments/permanents removals, you'll have to build a defensive shield for your stuff. Vannifar lists often keep a strong package of cheap permanents' removals in their pocket (like
Beast Within
for example), so you'll need to play carefully.

There's a lot of different ways you can head in order to reinforce your permanents' presence on the battlefield. A pretty simple and most of the time effective, despite of its ccm, you already included is
Avacyn, Angel of Hope
. I think you still lack a way to cheat her casting cost out to make her a stable and destructive power house.

Stax ''enchantment'' strategy is imo one of the most viable and solid strategy. With
Academy Rector
(amazing alongside your
High Market
), you'll be able to search the exact piece you need to lock the game in your favor.

Martyr's Bond
> Slow and unreliable on this brew. As you're not sacrificing any kind of permanent on your own, you'll struggle to get any value out of it outside of a lost political blast deflagrating when the game should already be over. Unless you add in some cards like
World Queller
, it defenitly doesn't deserve a slot imo.

Bishop of Rebirth
> a lot of people seems to give love to this card recently. However, I personally think it is just a bad inclusion. You spend 5 mana on a understated body and you have to wait a whole turn before getting value out of it IF you are in the researched scenario. There will be times where you have Boots or Greaves on board and this will be an insane mini-Sun Titan, but the situation is too rare to justify its presence.

Gift of Immortality
/
True Conviction
> weird ''win con'' heavily situational cards based on creatures. There is some logic behind Gift, but it's just too much of a unreliable idea. True Conviction has nothing to do here... it's 6 mana spend to lose the control on the game. If you're searching for card advantage and a bit of healing, go for the brand new
Dawn of Hope
(also is a good mana sink).

Whispersilk Cloak
> can't understand what this does in a deck full of flyiers and tapping effects.

Finally, as you want to challenge Vannifar, which is a blue deck, you'll need something to deal with the classical
Cyclonic Rift
.
Teferi's Protection
is a good solution (and it could also protects you form a lot of various situations / removals / etc.), but I'm sure you can find a lot of other response.

I hope you'll find useful ideas in this comment. Thanks a lot for sharing this, it reminds me good times.
Keep up the good work, keep up brewing!

2 weeks ago

Whenever i see a mono white deck i look at certain specific cards in the deck. poorly enough i have to cry becous i don't see these cards in this list. mono white needs a specific landbase and i build to much white decks to get the landbase in mono white decks to a certain clarified point. all my mono white decks have around 34 lands in the deck and i hope this will help u also.

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